Guns

About a week ago I posted a link to: http://www.nevadacarry.org/ and said “There is no need for this kindof shit in modern society.” Then Kenneth tried to take over my comment and change my opinion.

Probably the most concerning reply I got from him was: “You should be more concerned with other issues. Over 400,000 people a year die from tobacco related use and nobody gives a shit. “Yeah but smoking is a personal choice” thats right it is. So is carrying/owning a firearm and 11,000 people die from firearms murders a year but somehow this is way more concerning than cigarettes. Not to mention it is a conditionally recognized right as well as the right as a human being to protect your own life and the lives of your family”

I was going to just let this one go, trusting that Kenneth had proved my points about Nevada’s weapons laws enough just by the way he said what he said – as well as how he addressed those he disagreed with. But I couldn’t let his comments just sit on my page like that. This is my page! Here is a modified version of my response (modified because I don’t have the original content of the post here and it wouldn’t make a lot of sense if I just cut and pasted. it.

Kenneth asked what I was so scared of — menacing and modifiying weapons are a crime. OK, I guess that means people won’t commit them then? Most charges don’t deter criminals from committing them. If a woman is being threatened and menaced by her boyfriend, often the police say they can’t do anything until something happens anyways. Criminals obtain weapons and modify them because they can – not because they’re scared of breaking a law. Maybe if criminals were more concerned with laws then people wouldn’t feel the need to swear they need a gun to protect themselves. If guns were harder to get there would be less crimes committed with them. The latter is the answer.

I’m not willing to gamble anymore on the idea that the time I may need a gun to protect myself is worth the damage that everyone having them right now is doing. I’m also not willing to accept that everyone will continue to have that right because the NRA funds GOP in a such a way that they think they can’t do without their money. Everyone who is pro-gun seems to be so in entirely selfish ways. Your needs are not bigger than mine – my need is to feel safe, my need is to not have to think about if there are guns in the house that my kid visits to play with his friend, my need is to not have to accept that my school age children will need to practice drills for active shooter situations. My needs are not selfish – my need is for the basic right to feel safe in my community and in the country I live in.

Its time for gun laws to be argued for as hard and as vehemently as you and those like you argue to keep them. You and the people who argue like you are the kind of people I feel absolutely terrified about having guns in public. III%’s, Oregunians, Private Militias, Don’t Tread on Me’s – you all need to stop. We live in a modern society and guns have been abused to the point where a few have ruined it for the everyone else. That lesson was hardest learned in kindergarten.